


Bury me in the ocean floor.

by GhostOfDorothyStreet



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Mild Gore, Nightmares, disturbing imagery, fluffy start that goes way downhill, post 3.14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 04:23:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9531329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostOfDorothyStreet/pseuds/GhostOfDorothyStreet
Summary: The comfort of dreams can't last forever, and we're alone with the things we have done.





	

Ed walked down towards the dining room in a warm, sleepy daze. The sun filtered in through the window panes, filling the air with dancing golden motes of dust that swirled and shifted around his body as he passed through shafts of light. He must have slept in, for it to be this bright already, unless it was summer.

Was it summer?

His bare feet padded near silently across the polished wooden floor, but not so silently that he didn't catch the attention of his housemate the moment he entered the dining room. But then, hadn't they always been attuned to each other's presence that way?

Oswald looked up from his morning paper and smiled brilliantly at Ed, setting the paper aside and rising to his feet. Even first thing in the morning he was immaculately turned out, and Ed felt a sudden intense rush of affection for the small man.

Affection and... sadness?

Why sadness?

He shook off the feeling, and the question, and returned Oswald's smile, crossing the room to stand nearer to the dining table.

"Good morning, Mr Mayor."

"And good morning to you, my Chief of Staff," said Oswald, playfully, eyes dancing with mirth, "I wasn't sure if you would be joining me this morning, given how late you insisted on staying up last night. You slept well I trust?"

In truth Ed couldn't quite recall, but he nodded anyway.

"I'm glad," said Oswald, steadying himself on the edge of the table as he pushed away from in to stand in front of Ed, his cane left propped against the side of his chair. His gaze dropped to the open collar of Ed's pyjama top, settling on his neck, "I'm also glad to see those bruises of yours are finally healing up."

Ed frowned at that, puzzled for a moment, before it came back to him. Bruises, of course, from Butch's attack on him. Flesh and metal working in tandem to squeeze his trachea shut, spots swimming before his eyes before the world shrank down into darkness and silence. Had that been so recently? It must have been, for the marks to only just have faded away... And everything after that was largely a blank.

He brought one hand up to his neck, gently running his fingertips over where the marks had been.

No, not everything was a blank. He remembered Oswald's hands on his face, shaking but surprisingly strong. Oswald's panicked voice calling his name, as though trying to summon him back from the beyond. He remembered ginger tea, a feeling of safety and comfort despite the pain... He remembered Oswald pulling him into a hug, and the shared warmth of their bodies pressed together feeling like home.

If there was anything after that, then perhaps it didn't even matter.

"Ed?"

Oswald's voice pulled him back out of his thoughts, and he looked down at his friend, into pale eyes set in sharp features that always seemed so much softer when he was looking up at Ed. His best friend, the only true friend he had ever really had. And there it was again, that rush of feeling. Strange, inexplicable sadness, but mostly... love. 

Love.

"Ed, you seem distracted this morning, tell me, is something troubling you?"

Ed reached out a laid a hand gently against Oswald's cheek, drawing a small gasp and a flutter of long dark lashes from the other man. He took a half a step closer, drawing their bodies almost flush against each other.

"No," he said, voice hushed, words and meanings slipping away from him but hoping his message got across regardless, "No, it was nothing. I thought I was... lost, in the wrong place, but... this is where I should be. Where I want to be."

He wasn't sure if he leaned down,or if Oswald leaned up. Perhaps it was both, them moving as one as they so often did in these warm bright days. Regardless, in a movement both new and familiar and as natural as breathing, their lips met in a kiss, soft and tender but purposeful, somehow definitive.

For a long moment, every nagging concern, every jarring sense of wrongness or displacement Ed had been feeling melted away. How could he have any doubts or worries with the one person who truly loved and understood him held close in his arms? 

 

Until that is, the warm, soft lips pressed against his own suddenly chilled, and became clammy.

 

The cold dead smell of rot and polluted river filled his nostrils, as a glut of freezing water spilled into his mouth and down his front. He gagged and tried to pull away, but the gentle hands on his arms had become like cold iron claws, digging painfully through the now soaked cotton of his shirt sleeves and into the muscles of his arms. Filthy river mud and thick, black blood seeped into his clothing, gritty and coarse and sapping the heat from his skin, and he let out a choked sound of horror as he took in the sight of the figure now holding him in a death grip.

He was wearing the outfit Ed had last seen him alive in, wet and bedraggled and bloodstained from the bullet wound in his abdomen. His hair was plastered down over his forehead, the limp, jet black strands standing out even more than usual against deathly pale grey skin. Worst of all were the eyes, their bright blue-green hue muted and filmed over - the eyes of a waterlogged corpse, but burning with a hideous unnatural fire.

Oswald's blueish lips pulled back from his teeth in a grotesque parody of a smile, and Ed shuddered as the dead man leaned in close to whisper in his ear, breath like winter air against his cheek.

"You crossed a threshold, my dear Edward," said the thing that had been Oswald, tone lightly chiding, voice soft and familiar and wrong, "We both did, in our own ways. There is no going back to what we once had now."

The cold hands released their grip on Edwards arms, and though every sense urged him to flee he found his limbs felt leaden, too heavy to move. He tried to speak, to scream, but his jaw was locked shut.

"Of course, though you cannot go back, there are different ways of going forward. Options," One fish belly white hand delved into the pocket of Oswald's ruined jacket and withdrew a knife. Ed's knife, the knife Oswald had once held to his throat as they stood in that ramshackle little apartment a lifetime ago, "You could always join me."

As Ed braced himself for the feeling of cold steel between his ribs, the world seemed to fall away, and he was falling with it...

He jerked awake, thrashing in sweat soaked bedsheets, gasping for air like a man near drowning.

The house was quiet, dark still in the blue of pre-dawn, and empty save for Ed himself. He remembered then, all of it, reality washing back over him in a sickening wave as he let his head thump dully against the headboard. Isabella, her car crash, the lies and deceit and selfishness and the look of heartbreak on Oswald's face as he plunged down, down into the murky depths of the river.

He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose with a trembling hand. He knew there was little sense in trying to fall back to sleep, but he was not quite ready to face walking downstairs just yet.

Not with the taste of river water still on his tongue.

There would be no breakfast waiting for him when he did venture out into the house (Olga had left as soon as Ed had informed her that her beloved 'Meester Penguin' would not be returning to the house, cursing at him in Russian as she hauled a carpet bag into a cab, angry tears in her eyes), no welcoming smile or friendly small talk over tea and toast. No arms wrapped around him in a warm embrace, or bright eyes looking up at him with heartrending affection.

Edward Nygma was, once again, truly alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I finally write something for this fandom and it ends up depressing, yay.
> 
> Title is part of a line from 'The Horror of Our Love' by Ludo - a little cliche but suitably melodramatic and extra as all get out for these two.


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